A New Key to Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy, muscle growth, is the adaptation of your muscles to be capable of handling heavier weights for higher reps and greater range of motion over about a 2 week period. Note, that I said that hypertrophy is meant to make you CAPABLE of more mechanical work. It usually, but not always, requires you to do more work to adapt to. 

With this definition, one can figure that increasing loads, increasing reps, greater range of motion, greater frequency of exercise, and less rest in between exercises, can all help drive hypertrophy. 

However, there is one more key to hypertrophy, that may not be as obvious, and that is novelty. 

See my previous post about exercise levels. It makes it clear that the more advanced you are at an exercise, the more diminished its returns. When it comes to hypertrophy, it is well known that the most hypertrophy is gained in the novice phase of an exercise, as the vast majority of strength gained in the starter phase is from neural adaptations to the exercise, and from the intermediate phase onwards, all gains, and thus all sources of gains including hypertrophy, are vastly slowed down. 

Thus, it is now clear, that the new, or at least not as obvious driver of hypertrophy, is exercise novelty, as in, you can gain more muscle by doing exercises that you are relatively new to, then exercises you are already well trained at.  

To a person undertrained in strength. It is known that exercises like deadlifts, squats, bench press, and pull-ups, are the most effective at building muscle mass, and it is also well known, that after 1-2 years of dedicated training of these exercises, often less, the rate they can be progressed is greatly reduced. 

I do not care what anyone says, if you are not progressing, you are not growing, and you are not getting any stronger, it doesn't matter how hard you are training and how well you are eating. 

Therefore, if you were on lets say, deadlifts, squats and pull-ups, you and/or your coach deemed them to be the most effective exercises, well, after a while, they are no longer the most effective, because, in the variations you were training, your body has reached a point where it no longer will gain strength in these exercises nearly as easily.

Well, you assume, you are now an intermediate trainee, because, you now need to use both light and heavy days to gain more strength, right?

Not so fast. You are only an intermediate trainee in the exercises that you had been doing. If for example, you tried front squats, rack pulls and chin-ups, you would be much stronger in them then your untrained self, but, you wouldn't be at the point yet, where your body no longer adapts to them easily. Therefore, you can progress these exercises MORE QUICKLY then a completly untrained person. 

I say more quickly, because, your strength in the 3 exercises you're more trained in, has unlocked a third little known secret of strength and muscle gain, the surrounding muscle gain effect.